Hers to Claim (27 page)

Hel cradled her in his arms and sat them on a low bench arranged against one of the now radiantly brilliant walls
and rocked back and forth in agony. “Sweetheart…please…say something.”

~
~~

The tortured despair in Hel’s voice spurred Adonia to gargantuan effort.
She waded through the leaden sludge that comprised her conscious thought and attempted to organize her mouth and lips to produce a lucid sound. Her throat hurt as if at some point she had screamed herself hoarse, though she had no memory of doing so. She draped heavy arms around his neck and lifted her head to meet his intense gaze. “Fa-fi…fine.”

He closed his eyes and when he opened them again,
their gray depths displayed vast relief and the corners of his eyes were suspiciously wet. His body shuddered, and he choked out an incoherent sound of reprieve. “Thank you. Now can we try for more than a one-word answer?”

“
She
spoke.
She
spoke,” Adonia croaked. “To me.”

H
is face filled with understanding, and he pulled her into him, wrapping her more tightly in his embrace. “I understand. The first time you discover our Great Mother is real and aware of each of us, individually…it robs you of speech.”

Adonia nodded dumbly. “
Also
what
She told me.” Adonia squinted into the blazing light of the chamber and made a valiant attempt to master herself. “After the Great Rite, is it always this bright?”

Hel
grunted softly. “No. As I am coming to expect anytime I work a rite with you, something unusual has happened. But first, what did our Mother say?” Hel stood and gathered their robes from the glowing chamber floor. After donning his, he helped her to stand and slip into hers. “Steady.”

Adonia shivered at his touch and felt the remorseless heat of
lust flare anew. She needed a respite, some time to gather herself mentally and physically. She doubted she’d get it. Her legs threatened to give way, and once more she sank onto the bench. “Our Mother told me to summon Her bygone sons and daughters—soon. She told me only I could do so.” Adonia lifted her face to Hel’s. “I don’t understand.”

Hel considered her words for a moment
as he slid her bare feet into the slippers she’d worn to the chamber, then his brows rose. “It’s a reference to the script from the base of the tower, Nia. It must be.”

“
That says I will find them beneath my feet.” Adonia squinted down at the glowing floor and tapped the soles of her slippers against the stone as if testing its solidity. “The mighty asleep from ages gone.” She shook her head and sighed. “My brain refuses to make any sense of the words. The incomprehensible has followed the fantastical so relentlessly I feel as if I sleep-walk.” 

Hel sat beside her and
took her hand. “Understandable. The demands on you have been unremitting. I’ve not taken very good care of you, Beauty. I…by the Goddess…if I had lost you...”

She raised her eyes to his and placed a finger across his lips to stop his words.
“Please, I am yours to use and glad of it. You were willing to sacrifice your city and your people for me.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t let you do that. I want a whole Nyth Uchel returned to you.” She saw a light enter his eyes that warmed her weary soul. With an inarticulate expression, he gathered her into a tight hug for many long moments.

Hel broke the silence with a
n exhale of breath and released her. “Torre Bianca has a crypt where Nyth Uchel has buried four and a half centuries of kings and queens.” Adonia pulled back from him and Hel held her gaze steadily. “The mighty asleep from ages past? The crypt is quite literally beneath our feet. I’ll take you there after you have a chance to sleep and eat something.”

“How long have we been here? In the
Chambre Cristalle
? I’m so befuddled.”

Hel turned his
attention to the nearest window. “I’m not clear on that myself,” he admitted. “A day and a half, perhaps? I may have rushed a few steps. I feared…” He frowned. “I feared for Ramsey and Steffania and all the others.” He stood and held out a hand to her. “Come. It is time to see what the Great Rite has accomplished...and if our friends still live.”

As they descended in one of the mechanical lifts, the groundswell of noise filtering through the thick walls of Torre Bianca hinted
that all was not as it had been—that and the scent and temperature of the air. Adonia smelled the green of spring and a warm zephyr flirted with her cheeks from the open door on ground level where a weary, sweat-stained Ramsey leaned, his arms wrapped around his equally disheveled wife. Intense joy pierced Adonia and a brilliant smile lit her face. An upwelling of emotion brought tears to her eyes. “You live. Thank the Goddess. And my maidservant, Maddie…and Sara?

Ramsey
held her gaze steadily and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Adonia inhaled an unsteady breath at the sorrow that replaced her joy. She swiped at her eyes but the tears overflowed and ran steadily down her cheeks.

Ramsey straightened
. “Many died but their sacrifices were not in vain. Come, you should see the impossible magick you have wrought.”

An incredulous sight met her eyes as
they walked out the entry door into Torre Bianca’s courtyard. It was A’rken’s cottage revisited. Puddles of water stood everywhere and eaves dripped with melting snow. Green sprouts emerged from formerly barren flowerbeds and a warm breeze had replaced the bone-chilling cold. Even more astonishing, the very air shimmered with a silver luminosity, a reflection of the brilliance of Torre Bianca blazing like a white flame at their backs. Composed entirely of diaman stone, the tower’s whole structure radiated an interior light of the purest alabaster white. The atmosphere teemed with life and vigor silvered by Torre Bianca’s radiance.

Among
the splendor were signs of its cost—women and men with grief-stricken faces, children crying for mothers and fathers amid rows of motionless bodies neatly laid out, their faces discreetly covered.

A might
y cheer had gone up from the ragged townsmen gathered in the spacious area when she and Hel emerged from the tower. Confusion reigned as everyone pressed in on them wanting to touch Adonia’s body, her clothes, her hair. Adonia didn’t want to push them away but it was overwhelming; the strength she’d summoned to make it this far on her own two legs drained out of her until she hung on Hel for support.

Finally,
Hel, Ramsey and Steffania, Bernard and a few other attendants, forced the crowd back with sharp commands to, “Let
Magistra
DeCorvus through. She is exhausted and needs rest.” In a blatant display of protective ferocity, Hel swooped her up in his arms and hustled her toward the castle as the townspeople fell back to allow her room to pass.

Cradled in his strong arms, oblivion closed in again and she surrendered to
complete exhaustion.

As he restlessly prowled the sitting room adjoining his bedchamber, Hel’s gaze flicked from the impassive features of Ramsey to the curious face of Steffania and then to the concerned frown of Bernard. He’d tucked an unconscious Adonia into their bed and had called the three to join him. He’d explained what the Great Mother had told Nia during the Great Rite when the events of the last forty-eight hours hit with the force of a tidal wave. His normal self-discipline abruptly deserted him, and the acid discontent roiling within him erupted into screaming rage. “I cannot protect her, and the thought is driving me mad!”

His feet
caught on an ottoman and he stumbled. With a feral cry of frustration, he drew his sword and hacked violently at the footstool in his path. Fabric and feathers flew through the air and floated to the exotic carpet. Ramsey and Steffania exchanged glances of sympathetic concern, and Bernard hustled to a safe corner. When Hel’s innocent, unarmed victim collapsed to the floor, a mess of shattered wood and upholstery, he grunted in disgust and threw his blade to the opposite corner. “Someone take that away from me. I just ruined a 300-year-old antique. I’m not safe with a weapon at the moment.” Once again, he stalked the spacious room. “I cannot see a way to spare her. Worse, I must use her myself. Nia is critical to all Verdantia’s survival.”

Ramsey grunted rudely.
“Come spar with me. Unlike the hapless furniture, I’ll hit back.”

Hel saw right through the man.
Ramsey was
handling
him. He didn’t care. Perhaps physical exertion would excise some of the impotent inferno raging throughout his body. “In my present mood, I might kill you, DeKieran.”

Ramsey chuckled
at his snarled threat. “Accomplish what the wraiths and ghouls didn’t? You can try.”

Hel stomped to where his great sword lay and picked it up. “
The training circle behind the armory.”

Ramsey
grinned and opened his arm in a gesture. “After you.” He nodded at his wife. “Care to referee, Vixen?”

Steffania
demurred. “No, thank you. I promised to help Bernard inventory what remains in the armory.” She raised on her toes and kissed his mouth and murmured as she pulled away, her arms still draped on his shoulders, “Be nice to him,
dominus
. No cheating.”

Ram blinked at her
ingenuously while his hands massaged the globes of her ass, and he pulled her tightly into his groin with a low groan of desire. Hel couldn’t endure the intimate tableau. It reminded him too much of what
he
desperately wanted. “Any time you can
bestir
yourself, DeKieran.” He whirled and stomped out the door.

~~~

Hours later and much the worse for wear—that gods-be-damned hell-spawn
had
cheated—Hel groaned as he sank into the tub of chest-deep hot water. The bath was already taking on a pinkish tinge from the fall-out of his bout with Ram. Multiple flesh wounds burned as the hot water penetrated his torn flesh, but the heat felt wonderful on his abused muscles. He submerged totally and gently washed the grime from his face, taking care not to press too hard on the left side of his jaw. DeKieran had dealt him a brain-rattling blow with the hilt of his sword that had ended their contest with both of them sprawled in the grit. Hel counted himself lucky he still had sight in that eye. But, he had given as good as he’d gotten and smiled at the thought. The information Ramsey had relayed about the state of Nyth Uchel and their immediate surrounds also cheered him.

As the two of them lay on their backs in the gritty soil of the practice ring
, gasping like speared carp, DeKieran had described the magickal effects their working of the Great Rite had accomplished.

“There is the
obvious. Torre Bianca blazes as the brightest star on the night’s horizon, and the severe cold that gripped Nyth Uchel has turned temperate. We seem to be entering a new spring. You and Lady DeCorvus have also purified the land surrounding this city—though I don’t know how far that purification extends. It seems the wraiths and the ghouls have been eliminated from the city or at least driven back.” Ram groaned, and Hel turned his head and studied the man. Ramsey lay loose-limbed, eyes closed, his sword flat in the gravel beside him.

A
grin pulled at the corners of Hel’s mouth. “Ha! You look like a three-day-old kill, DeKieran.”

“You should see yourself, you hulking mass of
flea-infested idiocy,” Ram retorted, lying motionless. “How Lady DeCorvus tolerates you in her bed is beyond me. She must like sleeping with a mutant goat.”

“Hell-spawn.”

“Repellent, pestilent asshole.”

“
Noxious carcass of flatulent gas.”

Ramsey
remained silent for a moment. “That’s your fault. Serve something other than those gods-be-damned potatoes.”

Hel blinked several times
and then exploded in loud guffaws, joined quietly by Ramsey. Their hilarity attracted several townsmen who assisted them to their staggering feet.

~~~

“What have you done to yourself?” Nia entered the bathroom and knelt by the tub. Her anxious eyes scanned Hel’s body and her hands reached for his face, gently turning his head and smoothing back his hair so she could look at the puffy mound of purpling flesh that used to be the prominent ridge of his left cheekbone. “Oh…Hel,” she sighed. “Is this the worst of it?”

He cleared his throat
, feeling like a five-year-old child caught in some mischief by his mother. “Yes. The rest are superficial cuts.”

“
Steffania told me you and Ramsey had beaten each other to a bloody pulp. I brought some crystals. I will heal this quickly.”

He held her wrist when she would have stood and moved away. “
No, I don’t want you to expend any energy on my self-inflicted wounds. They will heal just fine on their own.”

Nia kissed his battered knuckles and
slid her wrist from his hold. “At least let me poultice your wounds. I have some plant extracts that will reduce the swelling and ease your pain.”

“All right, H
ealer. Work your craft.” He met her concerned gaze with a wincing smile. “And see to DeKieran, if you would.”

“I have already seen to Lord
Ramsey. He wouldn’t allow me to heal
him
either.”

Nia’s exasperation made him smile. “
Then I’ll allow him to live one more day. How do
you
feel? Any after-effects of the rite?”

“Ah.” She rose and wrapped her arms aro
und her waist, dropping her head. Her hair fell in a velvet brown curtain between them. “Well…ah…” She shifted as though uneasy in her skin. “Yes…well…”

For the first time, he noticed
a slight tremor that shook her slender frame. Hel knew well what his shy beauty hesitated to put into words. “Beauty, it’s that bad?”

The veil of her hair rippled as she nodded
, but he still could not see her face.

“The hot
mineral waters of the Grotta D’oro have been known to temper the burn of
cinnagin’s
arousal. Would you like to join me there? We can check on the
miku amar
, and the burial crypt is not far from the grotto.”

She lifted her head with a smile. “
Yes,” she whispered. “I’d like that very much. I’ll just go get my medicines…” She fled out the door.

With an amused shake of his head, Hel rose
, stepped out of the tub and began the painful task of drying off. He’d enjoy a long soak in the waters of the Grotta D’oro, too.

~~~

On the white sand shore of the subterranean grotto, Hel proffered a hand. “Come. The hot mineral waters will soothe you.

She’d placed her hand in his and
followed him to an underwater ledge where she sat straddle-legged on his lap, back to his chest, and allowed the waist-high water to appease her overwrought flesh. “Look, Hel, the
miku amar
.”

Adonia had no doubt the sweet creatures had sensed her as soon as she and Hel entered the grotto’s waters. Repressed lust rattled Adonia’s body. She must have projected pheromones to the deepest parts of the subterranean lake.
They watched as the delicate creatures swooshed toward them.

“Look carefully, Nia.
Tell me what you see,” Hel whispered, his voice full of burgeoning excitement, and she strained to see what had provoked him.

There
! Sheltered among their parents’ free-floating tentacles and cilia were small blobs of blue and pink, tiny duplicates of their mother and father. She watched with growing delight as the pink female wrapped a delicate tentacle around Adonia’s wrist and her tiny offspring bumped and bobbed against Adonia’s belly. Laughter welled inside her at the antics of the tiny offspring.“Oh! They tickle. Sweet babies. There are so many of them. Do the little ones always behave like this?” Adonia wriggled on Hel’s lap, giggling at the sensations the tiny
miku amar
made as they continually bumped into her abdomen.

Hel drew back and looked at her with the strangest expression.

“What? Oh, Hel, they tickle. I’m afraid to move for fear I will hurt them.”

“The
little ones are saying hello to my son or daughter.” His voice choked out the words thickly and his eyes looked suspiciously bright.

“What?”

“Nia, you are pregnant.”

“What!” she squeaked as Hel crushed her to him and straightened, turning them in dizzy circles in the warm waters.

“
You wonderful woman! Oh, by the Goddess, Nia…”

Adonia saw the moment he recalled their circumstances
and the unsurpassed joy filling his expression faded. He lowered them to the ledge and sat her across his lap; his great hands bracketed her face, and his gaze captured and held hers.

“You
are pregnant with my babe.” Hel said flatly. “Is that distasteful to you?”

“No!
No, never. I’m…stunned…and puzzled. I have used Maiden’s Clover without fail. It is a good contraceptive. How?” She saw sorrow flit across Hel’s face and raised a hand to his cheek. “Don’t misunderstand. I delight in bearing your child. This is just so...unexpected.”

His lips quirked up on one side
, and his eyes lost the pained look they’d worn moments ago. “Another benefit of the
miku amar
. It’s known they cause ovulation in a woman if the
miku
are also breeding. It probably happened just before your female went dormant.” Hel wrapped his arm around her middle and cuddled her closer to him with a slight chuckle at the tiny blobs of color bobbing atop the disturbed water then making small darts toward Adonia. “Since they are symbiots, the boost to a woman’s ability to conceive ensures their own species continues.” They both watched the tiny
miku
swarm around Nia. “You are certain you don’t mind?” Hel murmured.

Adonia
planted a long kiss on his elegant mouth. “I would have chosen a different time, but I am over-joyed to be giving you a new DeHelios.”

~~~

Hours later, damp, cool air washed Adonia’s face as Hel led her hand-in-hand through an immense underground space filled with marble statuary and tombs of the majestic rulers out of Nyth Uchel’s fabled history. He stopped in front of a massive block of unadorned marble bearing a simple inscription.

Our beloved, Isolde,
eternal queen of our hearts.

We
are yours in death as we were yours in life.

Federago DeHelios & Agentio DeLorcha

“They outlived her by some years. When Federago died, Agentio followed soon after. Lore has it that their faces wore beatific smiles as they passed—as though they greeted their lost love. I’ve often wondered if she met them. It’s a nice thought.”

She thought so, too. Adonia’s throat had closed
, and her eyes threatened to spill the tears collecting in them. She cleared her throat and swiped at her face.

Hel drew her close.
“Since she has come to you during your healing trances, do you want to try to connect with Isolde first?”

“Yes.”

Hel spread a thick blanket on the stone floor and sat cross-legged. He reached up for her hand and pulled her onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her waist and snugging her to his front.

Adonia spilled the glowing diaman crystals she’d brought onto her lap
, took a deep breath and tried to relax her body. “This may take a while. I’m not sure of what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m supposed to find.”

His lips
traveled kisses along her jaw. “I wish I could guide you, but there is no precedent for what you attempt. Whatever time you need, Beauty. I’m here.”

Adonia settled into the repetitive chant she’d found most effective for reaching the aetheric
plane when healing those of the fading and despite her doubts, found herself in a familiar disembodied state within moments of beginning. She looked down on herself from above and could readily see the slim white stream of aetheric energy that tethered her to her physical body—a body safely enwrapped in Hel’s arms. Thus reassured, Adonia began to quest mentally, expanding her awareness of the amorphous metaphysical plane, calling out for the woman she had come to think of as a protector in this altered existence. “Queen Isolde, it is Adonia. Queen Isolde, if you hear me, please make yourself known to me.”